


tales to be told

by SyntheticRevenge



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: (it's really not that bad just thought I'd warn everyone), Bickering, Canon-Typical Body Horror, Drug Use, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Mental Health Issues, Origin Story, Other, The Mechanisms-Typical Violence, This is actually quite soft for them i think?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25017796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyntheticRevenge/pseuds/SyntheticRevenge
Summary: Immortality tasted like dirty metal and chest pain and toomuchnotenough feeling. The good doctor shot him straight through the head just to check that he was actually immortal, well and truly, as if the strange, numb, hours spent with his heart literally outside his body while she dicked around shoving the new one in weren’t enough proof.(Jonny rehearses telling the story of the Mechanisms, and the others are not particularly helpful)
Relationships: Dr Carmilla & Jonny d'Ville, Drumbot Brian & Jonny d'Ville, Ivy Alexandria & Jonny d'Ville, Jonny d'Ville & Ashes O'Reilly, Jonny d'Ville & Gunpowder Tim, Jonny d'Ville & Marius von Raum, Jonny d'Ville & Nastya Rasputina, Raphaella la Cognizi & Jonny d'Ville, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Comments: 64
Kudos: 226





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello Mechanisms Fandom I Am Here To Ruin Everything. My brain got completely vacuumed up by this group of assholes and I had to write something, so, I decided to go for the origin story. This is just Jonny and Nastya, if people like it I'll do more, I'm having A Lot of fun. Hope you enjoy!

Immortality tasted like dirty metal and chest pain and toomuchnotenough feeling. The good doctor shot him straight through the head just to check that he was  _ actually _ immortal, well and truly, as if the strange, numb, hours spent with his heart literally outside his body while she dicked around shoving the new one in weren’t enough proof.

Thing is, though, looking back, Jonny doesn’t actually remember  _ asking _ her for immortality. Or  _ being  _ asked. He sort of just remembers his dad’s body on the ground, the blood soaking into his shoes, and then...fucking presto, he guesses, bang, boom, immortal. Something happened between then, sure. Probably he got blackout drunk. Maybe he killed himself. Who knows, who cares, the past is the past and there were far more interesting tales to be told and a whole endless string of lifetimes to hear them.

Burning One-Eyed Jack’s down should’ve probably been cathartic. Who doesn’t love a good ol’ fashioned revenge song, right, gender-neutral lads? A nice dash of arson? The tragic figure, hands covered with his father’s blood, lighting a match to destroy the man who forced him into it?

Yeah, all very romantic, but Jonny felt fucking nothing, so that was a waste of time. Nothing other than one of those weird jumpy surges of electric-wiggle excitement, that is, at the screaming.  _ There were innocent people in there _ , he told himself, experimentally.

Still felt nothing. Fuckit. They’re part of a  _ story _ now,  _ his _ story, and what the hell else were they gonna do with those lives? Gamble everything away til their own kids killed them? This was a better out.

He did regret going with Carmilla pretty quickly, though. Didn’t take long. When it became clear that  _ routine maintenance _ was just a way of sugarcoating  _ digging around in your wimpy little flesh-casing to fix old problems and cause new ones _ , it started getting fairly fucking old, actually. Only so many times a metal heart can overheat and burn the inside of your sternum before the pain goes from thrilling to  _ fucking really? Again? _

He started fighting back, shooting blindly whenever she came near with that  _ sciencey _ look in her eyes, except then she installed some sort of knockout gas dispersal...thing in his room on their ship, so then he built up a tolerance and resistance to that (which is to say, it stopped knocking him out, but it did get him  _ real _ high), so then she just started killing him to get him to shut up when she wanted to fuck around with his heart.

The rest of the time, she wasn’t too bad. Kind of funny. Sang along when he’d start singing to himself, told him stories that he then retold--much better, he would add--to anyone who wanted to listen along the way. It was a shame about the unavoidable and repeated murders, but they never talked about that part, just ignored it, like when Jonny would fight with his parents and they’d just drop it forever.

He was her first successful creation, and fine, maybe part of him was a little bit proud of that, even if ‘successful’ was maybe a strong word (the mood swings, the searing-metal heart, the constant tightness in his chest, but did Carmilla ever fix those? No, of course not, why would she, that would be  _ helpful _ ). 

But he wanted to be the last, because no one fucking deserved this. He could resign himself to it, because, to be fair, wading tit-deep into a bloody wild-wasted bar brawl and knowing you can just have a fucking cosmic blast because you know for a fact you’re gonna come out the other side was, it seemed, going to be a  _ really _ fun way to spend eternity. Other people, though, probably weren’t going to be as cut out for this sort of life.

He asked Carmilla once, if she planned to make others, and she just made a noncommittal noise and poured them both shots of whiskey. 

_ And he didn’t push it, because he is, chronically and incurably, an idiot. _

Alright, who’s telling the fucking story, here, Ashes? Is it you? No. It isn’t. Shut up. We’re getting to you. Fuck.

_ The third person is very self-important. _

You--you were  _ Hades _ for a century, Ashes, do not come at me about self-importance, alright? Do I have to kill you or can I continue?

_ I’d like to see you try. _

_ Fucking  _ okay, fine, I will! 

Okay. Please, can I continue? Anyone wanna join them? No? Thank you. Right, so, where were we...ah. Yes. So, Jonny-- _ yes,  _ third person, shut the fuck up, I am  _ trying something out, thank you _ \--didn’t want there to be any more Mechanisms. 

Unfortunately, as a wise man with weird lips and dorky hair once said, you can’t always get what you want, and Carmilla came back from a brief trip to revolution-torn Cyberia holding the dead body of a princess, which was a little startling, to be honest.

She drained the rest of the blood from the princess’s veins, which wasn’t actually all that much, and hooked her up to a massive IV drip of quicksilver. Not actually sure how she knew when there was enough fluid back in her veins. And no, Raph, I don’t care enough for you to explain it to me.

You neither, Marius, we both know you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.

Alright, all of you have sufficiently fucking broken my narrative flow and worn me down, I'll drop the third person, are you all happy? Great. 

The princess didn't wake up for a good while, just laid on Carmilla’s operating table, twitching occasionally. I thought Carmilla’d fucked up and she was just, you know, properly dead, or good as. 

Carmilla didn't want me near her unsupervised. Not sure what she was afraid of, but all it did was make me want to be near her unsupervised more than I already did, which, to be fair, was not at all. When she finally woke up, she went straight from the groggy confusion of the recently dead--a feeling I'm sure we all know intimately--straight to cold distrust. 

I asked her her name. I thought I was being gentle. Hell, I didn't even want to kill her yet. 

_ Jonny, you pointed your gun at my face and said ‘who the fuck are you’. _

I said I didn’t  _ want _ to kill you. 

_...sure. But gentle? _

That’s extremely gentle for me. See? Tim agrees. Anyway, you--she--told me her name was Nastya. She shook a lot in the beginning, something about human bodies not being the biggest fans of metal blood (truly, who would’ve guessed?).

It was genuinely pathetic.

_ Fuck off, Jonny _ .

I mean ‘pathetic’ like I pitied you, Nas, like you made me have an actual genuine human emotion, it’s a  _ compliment _ .

_ Pathetic is never a compliment _ .

You’re right, I just don’t want your violin bow getting anywhere near my orifices. Death is one thing, rosin in the urethra is quite another. Anyway, she was not a fan of Carmilla’s, and really, who is, but she was new to the whole thing and terrified so I, like the occasionally dashing anti-hero I am theoretically capable of being, agreed to stay with her and make sure the Doctor didn’t do anything worse than she already had. 

I was pretty confident in my ability to do that, considering that I don’t think anything worse possibly  _ could’ve _ been done. She fell asleep, I fell asleep, it was almost touching! Who doesn’t love a little  _ bonding _ .

_ You shot me in the chest because I accidentally woke you up. _

I held you as you died and apologized! That counts as bonding.

_ You didn’t apologize, Jonny, you said, and I quote, ‘to be fair, you brought this on yourself’. _

Well, that’s--I--why do you have such good recall? You were  _ really _ fucked up. I was sort of counting on you not remembering any of this so well.

_ Someone has to remember things right. _

Or no one could remember them right and we could all make up better stories. I’d much prefer that.

Anyway, not too long after this, Carmilla decided we needed a bigger ship, and I was her lapdog, I guess. Not that Nastya really could’ve done anything, she was still ice cold, shivering constantly, and about 90% nonverbal. So, I got a bunch of dumb assholes to shoot themselves in the head, and we became the new owners of the Aurora.

_ No one  _ owns _ Aurora. _

Fine, the new  _ residents _ of the Aurora. It was love at first sight for Nastya, the sick freak, one look and she was off to hump a warp core, or whatever the fuck she does in the engine room when none of us are around. 

Don’t look at me like-- _ fine _ , it was a very tender romance, Nastya spent a lot of time hiding from the Doctor and myself in the veins of the ship, and it was a lot warmer closer to the Aurora’s heart, and slowly the feeling crept back into Nastya’s extremities, and they fell in love, and it’s not at all weird. 

The Doctor and I, after this, had a  _ talk _ about mechanizing without consent. By  _ talk _ I mean I held her at gunpoint while she was in the shower and told her never to do that to anyone who didn’t agree to it ever again.

I don’t think my threats ever really  _ meant _ anything, but she agreed. Though, I guess I should’ve defined ‘consent’ better in that conversation, considering how the next Mechanism got recruited.

Is...has Ashes come back yet?  _ Fuck _ , they’re getting slow these days, you burn to death too many times and your body just decides to take its sweet time, I guess.

Well, I’ll wait for them, it’s only fair you assholes all get a chance to completely destroy my narrative cohesion.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello naughty children it's Ashes time 
> 
> (i'm sorry Mx O'Reilly you deserve better than my writing)

Welcome back to the land of the unfortunately living, Mx. O’Reilly, you certainly took your sweet time.

_ Oh, fuck, Jonny, I’m sorry, someone killed me, so--sort of made it hard to get here. _

Everyone’s a comedian on this godsforsaken ship.

_ It’s not godsforsaken if I’m here. _

Oh, my apologies, Lord Hades, how could I forget. We’re in the presence of greatness and should bow down. 

_ So you can learn! _

As the captain of this ship--Tim I will rip your eyes out of your head and throw them to the octokittens I fucking swear I will--I feel I deserve a little more deference than I’m being given. This is, ostensibly, a rehearsal, after all, and aren’t we all seasoned professionals?

Shut up, Nastya, I rehearse--do you think I just  _ ad-lib _ this shit perfectly in one go? No, I know this isn’t good, it’s a dry run--it’s a  _ first draft _ and you are all being  _ difficult _ \--

Fucking fine! Fine. So, where were we?

Yes. I, Jonny D’ville, would-be preventer of future mechanization, was thwarted by Doctor Carmilla, our evil no-good bitch of a creator--I am  _ recapping  _ to get my  _ groove  _ back and I need you all to stop making those  _ noises-- _ when she never agreed to a set definition of consent to be mechanized.

Now, I’m a reasonable man. In my book, consent is someone telling you they want something without any pressure on them. For example, if I were to shove a hot poker up Marius’s ass--oh, hush, I didn’t enjoy it the first time, I’m not going to do it again--and tell him I’ll stop if he does something for me, and he agrees, well, that isn’t consent. 

Asking to mechanize someone so they don’t burn to death or die of smoke inhalation is also, as I see it, not consent. I mean, what was our dear Ashes to do, say no? Die pointlessly, framed for some of the only things they  _ hadn’t _ done?

_ Absolutely the fuck not _ .

Exactly. So the Doc didn’t exactly keep up her end of the deal, and I was  _ pissed  _ when she dragged a well-toasted mobster back up from Malone. I was locked out of the lab, which was probably a smart move, because I was...uh…you know when you get so angry you shoot yourself in the head just to make your brain stop screaming?

Yeah. That. Nastya was somewhere fondling the Aurora’s fuel lines, or something, so she wasn’t there for commiseration. 

_ You gonna make this all about you, then? _

Sorry, were you conscious or coherent? Do you have a better story to tell? As I recall, by the time my brain reconstructed itself enough to process soundwaves again, you were just fucking howling your metal lungs out.

Can’t blame you, but there’s not much of an arc to just...blinding pain and screaming. 

_ Then why do you make us listen to stories about your life? _

Ouch. You’re mean when you die. 

Anyway, Ashes finally shut up and got over it, like we all do--I mean, I’ll hand it to Nastya, she was at least  _ very _ quiet about the whole ordeal, which made her  _ significantly  _ more tolerable--and the Doc offered to burn their shithole of a home planet down with them.

And as you all know, our Ashes never turns down an opportunity to start a planet-consuming fire. I didn’t actually meet them until after that, but--well, there’s a whole song about this, who needs to waste more time.

_ So, it’s wasting time when it’s not about you. _

Yes! Truly, Ashes, you do  _ get  _ me. So, you--they--came back from that, and I got to watch the burning from space, which I have to admit,  _ was _ spectacular. I got a bit jealous, actually, I wanted the catharsis of lighting my home on fire again, but that’s a high you only get once, like the first time you die.

Carmilla avoided me, which was probably smart, and she tried to warn Ashes to as well, but Ashes isn’t the best at doing what they’re told. They gave me this  _ look _ , like an appraisal and a dismissal at the same time.

_ I was thinking that you were small enough that I could pick you up and snap your spine in half like a chocolate bar if I wanted to. _

Charming.

_ Why don’t you tell them your opening move? _

Fine. I fairly diplomatically told them they must be as fucking stupid as they look to have agreed to mechanization, even under the threat of death, and that--

_ He called me an idiot, I twitched like I was going to hit him, and it startled him so hard he tripped and fell on his ass. _

Well, that’s not exactly--I--I was drunk, and the Aurora used to be--um--slipperier, back in the day, long ago, you know, Nastya used a lot more lube back then-- _ why do you keep giving me that look _ \--I didn’t--

Why would I flinch away from violence? I love violence. You know I love getting beat up. Ashes is lying. They’re a notorious liar--at  _ least _ as much as me, Brian, yes, come on now.

_ Who are they going to believe, D’ville, the bastard of a first mate or their reliable,  _ loving _ quartermaster? _

I hate you. I really, truly do. I wish you’d died in that fire.

_ Aww, that’s so sweet, I wish you’d died when your father killed you! _

Fuck, I guess that is, inherently, a kind sentiment with us, isn’t it. Then fine, I hate you and I’m glad you got mechanized.

_ I’m not glad I have to spend eternity with you, but I appreciate the thought. _

I can’t win, can I.

_ You absolutely can’t. _

Wonderful. Well, however it happened, I did fall, and Ashes did laugh at me for a solid five minutes without having to take a breath because of the  _ ceaseless _ wonders of having metal lungs. 

I told them I didn’t much like them and they didn’t stop laughing, so I shot them, but they shot me back, and, you know. I guess we’ve never particularly progressed past that.

As I hear, Nastya got along well with them. They didn’t kill each other even  _ once _ . I heard them actually  _ laughing _ together, which shocked me, since I’d never heard Nastya make any even remotely joyful sound in the time I’d known her. 

This time, I tried to stab Carmilla to get my point across, but she wasn’t having it. She had me on my back and strapped down with my tongue a disconcerting distance from my body before I could get past ‘learn what consent means, you monster bitch’. 

So I wasn’t really making any headway there, and she got even fucking  _ less _ consent from the next Mechanism, maybe out of spite.

Someone flick Brian over to Fun Brian Mode, if you’d be so kind.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Brian Time. I was...very nervous about writing this chapter because I have a lot of feelings about Brian but have no idea how to write him. I still have no idea how to write him but I had fun so hopefully it's forgivable. I also, over the course of this, managed to make myself ship Jonny/Brian so...huh. Hope you enjoy!

_ Jonny, I don't want to do this.  _

Stop covering the switch! Gods, you are  _ such _ a fucking stick in the blood. 

It's the expression  _ now _ , Ivy, I'll thank you to not correct me. 

_ You're just going to be mean and lie. _

Which is different than normal…how exactly?

_ There's already a song about me. _

There's songs about most of us. I will give you that most of them aren't as sad and dull as yours, but, well, at least that makes it an accurate depiction. Look, I'll give you a lead-in, you can flick yourself over to EjM, it'll be a cosmic  _ blast _ . 

So! Doc Carmilla and I were on...bad terms, to say the least. I became  _ quite _ difficult and a bit more murdery than normal. Killed Ashes a lot for sport, and Nastya a few times if she decided to get spicy with me. And they killed me back, and even first on occasion, I'm no bully, it's all, you know, consensual, mutual, an expression of affection, etcetera etcetera. 

It's not  _ defensiveness _ , Baron Von No-Degree, it's an explanation for the stupid mortals we perform for who don't understand the  _ intricacies _ of immortals. 

_ Nothing intricate about shooting someone several times until they die. You know, you'd think your aim would've improved over millennia.  _

In my defense, I'm often quite drunk. Also hello, Spicy Brian! I've missed you!

_ Shut up.  _

Never. And none of you get any ideas about shutting me up, I did take the standard first rehearsal precaution of pocketing several explosives. I go down, we all go down, and the Aurora gets damaged, which...well, we've all been on dear Nastya’s bad side, haven't we, no need to go into grisly detail there. 

_ They weren't real explosives for Ulysses Dies at Dawn.  _

If you all hadn't been so fucking rude about my singing, no one would've ever needed to  _ know _ that. However, I did learn my lesson, and I assure you they're real this time. 

Anyway. Yes. The Doctor and I were not getting on, I was especially destructive, Ashes and Nastya formed some kind of unspoken sibling pact that somehow kept them out of the way of most of Carmilla and my more...aggressive confrontations, many of which ended with her painfully fucking around with my heart.

I would curse her, she would render me mute with pain...it was, I assume, how most people's relationships with their maternal figures are. 

And then, one day, or night, or whatever--hard to tell in space when your circadian rhythm is basically literally just ‘sleep when you're dead’--the Aurora drifted by a man. Just...floating there. 

Now, this used to be abnormal! Back in the pre-Brian days, people generally stayed away from the vacuum of space, even Mechanisms. I know we’re all very gung-ho now, especially those of us with wings, but seeing Brian floating out there was a bit jarring. We all know the song, he looked about as unpleasant as you might gather from the lyrics.

Naturally, Carmilla never passed up an opportunity for a project, or, more accurately, another 95 to 100% dead labrat, so she coerced the Aurora (with Nastya’s help) into scooping him in. He was in her lab for a very, very long time. 

I was past being mad that Carmilla didn’t listen to me. I mean, I wasn’t, I have an endless well of anger in me--for such a tiny man, yes, ha ha, Ashes, it’s  _ so  _ funny  _ every  _ time--but, you know, since this is a story, I’m going to pretend I was past being mad and that I was just tired, because I can’t repeat the bit about me blowing my brains out to get some fucking peace every single time.

_ Anyway _ , I’m fairly sure it was something close to days before Brian came out of the lab. Walked like a baby space-deer on metal legs that made  _ horrific _ clanging sounds on the floor. Nastya forced shoes on him almost immediately, gods forbid her girlfriend’s skin get roughed up by this metal monstrosity--though she framed it as an act of kindness. 

It wasn’t, Nas, it was pure selfishness, don’t lie.

_ I don’t care, at least  _ someone _ was nice to me. _

Yes, well, Brian, to be fair, you were just a tiny fucking bit off-putting. I will admit that my initial reaction was probably cruel and unfair but I do stand by it. 

_ Yeah, cos maniacal laughter and ‘what the fuck ugly spaceship gave birth to and then abandoned you on a doorstep’ is something to stand by. _

Is that what I said? That’s still quite funny, actually, I’m proud of that one. 

_ I hate you _ .

Truly, you wound me. I’m gutshot. Shattered. Nothing pierces like the condemnations of a  _ good man _ .

_ Jonny, I do not give a shit if you have live explosives or not, I’m this close to-- _

Well, that is your thing, isn’t it, not caring about the consequences as long as you get me to shut up? See, dear audience, Carmilla installed a cruel twist of fate in our dear Drumbot--

_ I fucking hate you and the way you tell stories. _

I’m not a huge fan of the way you play banjo, but I don’t go around telling you--

_ Fuck you, I’m good at banjo _ .

Sure.

Anyway, as I was  _ saying _ , Carmilla played a very mean joke on  _ poor _ ,  _ sweet _ ,  _ goodhearted  _ Brian. Goodhearted he remained, since his heart  _ was  _ the only organic thing left pulsating and fleshy in that hollow, metal body. 

She installed a switch in him, to flip his morality around, from Means Justify Ends--the fucking boring one where he won’t do anything ‘wrong’, which is to say anything  _ fun-- _ and Ends Justify Means, where he’ll do whatever as long as you convince him it’s the right thing to do.

Now, she didn’t really inform Brian or the rest of us about the switch. Brian must’ve known, since it was, you know,  _ on his person _ .

_ I didn’t want to touch it in case it was a killswitch. _

...right. Because installing a killswitch on someone makes... _ complete _ sense. Weren’t you meant to be a doctor?

_ In my defense, you people were fucking terrifying, I didn’t know. _

Fine. Well, I found the switch whilst trying to figure out how exactly to go about killing Brian. It’s not as easy to kill someone made of metal as it is us fleshy meatsacks. The Toy Soldier can, I’m sure, attest to that, though I really would prefer it did not.

...yeah, that’s my bad for saying its name. No, you can--we’ll get to--we’ll do you next, alright? If we really must, you’re not even a Mechanism--

_ That’s unnecessarily harsh. _

Sorry, was it mechanized? All of you need to stop looking so offended on its behalf,  _ fuck me _ , it’s as much a monster as any of us, I mean, just the other day it literally  _ handed  _ me an octokitten without--

Right, stop acting like the octokittens only have an issue with me when we all saw the nasty orange one with the--I am not calling it that stupid name, Tim-- _ fine _ , when we all saw  _ Better Bertie _ \--Bertter is a nonsense word, Tim--

_ Aren’t you getting off-topic? _

Yes! Yes, Brian, I am! Thank you for steering me in the right direction and thereby doing your job for fucking once.

As I was saying, I found Brian’s morality switch during my desperate, futile flail at killing him for the first time--which truly is an initiation ritual by now. If I don’t kill you as soon as possible, or at least  _ try _ , you’re not a real Mechanism. 

I flipped it, and he went from trying to talk me out of hurting him and doing his best not to hurt me back to a good ol’ EjM Brian rampage. Decided that if getting me to stop was his goal, the best way would be killing me first.

And he was right! Very efficient, too. I quite admired it, actually. 

When I came back around, he was having some sort of existential meltdown about the morality switch, which I was not particularly equipped to help with, nor did I  _ want _ to in any meaningful way, so I sort of just left him there.

_ Well, to be fair, it’s sort of a hellish nightmare to be launched into space for saving lives in an unorthodox way, only to be taken in and turned into a-- _

Did I say I care now? 

_ \--you know, this is going to be a really shit performance. _

It is, as I have stated many times, still being conceptualized, and shut up.

Right, let’s get the Toy Soldier over with, if it insists.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading <3  
> (for the record I love Lost in the Cosmos and also Brian's banjo-playing I am sorry for the mean jokes Mr. Drumbot Sir)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!! This chapter's slightly shorter than the others because I do not have any faith at all in my ability to write the Toy Soldier. I hope you enjoy!

Alright, well, this isn’t going to be fun.

_ I’m Having A Jolly Grand Time, Jonny!  _

I’m...yes, I’m sure you are. Right. Well. Um. Yes. The Toy Soldier.

_ That Is My Name! _

Yes. I know. Please try to keep it down, I would love to keep pretending that I’m...you know, telling a cohesive story. 

_ I Will Pretend Too! _

...ouch. Alright. Well, honestly, there’s not much I can tell you about how the Toy Soldier joined our merry band of bastards, considering I was completely out of the picture. 

After Brian, I continued...well... _ acting out _ , I suppose, as Carmilla put it to the others while I was dying on the ground nearby. You know. Basic senseless murder. Shooting myself over and over. Trying to make her regret making me immortal so she’d undo it.

Didn’t work. Just got me very dead and very arrested. I was the latter, one night before a show. I was quite fucking blasted, and I don’t really remember  _ why _ they threw me in jail, though I’m sure I deserved it. Ashes said it was something about the fact that I ate someone’s finger off their hand, but I’m fairly certain I didn’t start with that until several decades later.

Who knows, it all blurs together. Anyway, I was incarcerated and too fucked up to fight back that hard, and certainly in no state to remember lyrics, so my  _ dear, dear friends _ left me there and found a replacement.

Yes, I am still mad about that. I’m singular and you should all be so fucking lucky to have me performing with you.

_ You Are Quite Bloody Good, Jonny! _

Thank you. See, the thing has  _ some _ common sense...somewhere...in that... _ frightening _ metal head of its. 

Point is, yeah. I don’t know. Heard they found it in a store and it had a nice voice. I did not find that voice particularly nice when a Very Mysterious Arson that was definitely not committed by galactically notorious arsonist Ashes O’Reilly ended up destroying the jail I was in, conveniently allowing me to stagger out.

I was not at all well--we’ve all been there, you know, when you get so fucked up you  _ die _ but somehow your shitty regenerative process still forces you through a hangover? And you know how the Toy Soldier is both  _ very _ loud and  _ very _ high-pitched and how that can feel like your brain is being squeezed between a cheese grater and a wall of knives?

Yeah. It said--

_ Good Day, Sir! Are You Quite Well? You Look Ill! May I Assist? _

\--yes. Horrifying recall.

I shot it. Immediately. Without hesitation. Several times. But it did not stop  _ talking _ and I couldn’t  _ make  _ it and I would’ve cried in frustration if there’d been any liquid at all left in my body.

The others just sort of stood around and watched my little meltdown, as is their wont, and once I was finally satisfied that nothing I could do would make it stop talking, we went back to the Aurora.

We tried to leave the Toy Soldier behind. It was a very disconcerting creature--and I’m not sure why I’m using the past tense. I didn’t want it around, and I truly don’t think Nastya or Ashes did either. Brian’s...well, Brian’s fucking weird about odd, lost things, especially when he’s on Boring Brian mode, so he tried to vouch for it.

Regardless. We were  _ sure _ we left it on the planet, and yet, in the middle of a heated game of poker--I believe Nastya had a knife through my hand because she caught me cheating--it popped back up, asking us--

_ Would Any Of You Fine Jolly Fellows Like A Spot Of Tea? _

\--it is fucking terrifying when you do that but I have to admit, it does fit this format a lot better than what I’ve done with everyone else, so I’ll tolerate it if I have to.

It offered us tea, and instead of, you know, disgusting, nonalcoholic, leaf garbage, it handed an octokitten to Brian when he made the mistake of saying  _ yes please _ while all of us were busy wondering how the fuck it even got on our ship.

Not to re-open a centuries old argument, but I still think the Aurora let it on, so really, Nastya, this is  _ your _ fault. 

Truly, if looks could kill, Nastya Rasputina would have the highest bodycount of us all. 

Well, anyway, Brian dealt with the unexpected octokitten situation by ripping it in half with his very scary metal hands--that man truly has the capacity for some  _ frighteningly _ entertaining violence when he sets his mind to it--and we all tried to get the Toy Soldier to tell us how, pray tell, the  _ fuck _ , it had ended up there.

It said…

_ I Followed You All! You Seemed Like You Were Having Fun! I Like Singing With You! _

Now, obviously, we weren’t really  _ in _ the market for another singer, we all did  _ just fine _ without one-- _ yes _ , we did, shut up, but none of my attempts to remove the metal fucker from our presence ever  _ worked _ . I airlocked the thing at one point, and it somehow-- _ somehow _ \--ended up back on the ship within the day.

I did not like the Toy Soldier. I still don’t. But it is, unfortunately, just as permanent as the rest of us, so here it remains, endlessly, shredding my eardrums day in and day out with its absolutely goddamned maddening voice.

Besides, Carmilla liked it, because of course she did. Was fascinated by how it could function “so well” with a mechanized brain. She was insane, naturally, because I don’t think anything it does could be described as  _ functioning well _ , but at least it added a little more--I don’t know, spice and variety to our miserable existences?

_ Thank You Jonny! You Are A Good Friend And Captain! _

First ma-- _ fuck _ . No--no, it was instinct, it was--none of you get to use that against me, Tim, stop  _ laughing _ \--

Gods, I hate you. I hate you and your stupid mustache. You know that?

_ That Is A Good Fun Joke Between Friends! _

It absolutely isn’t.

This is all beside the point, which is that Carmilla had a particular fascination with mechanized brains. Naturally, this was just a scientific, detached fascination, and it didn’t lead her to commit any more atrocities.

_ Ha _ , as if, can you fucking imagine? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! You guys are so nice, it makes me really happy that people are enjoying this.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh I love Ivy but I have literally no idea how to handle her At All so. I tried. I really did. There's...more cannibalism in this one than normal, I'd say. Just a warning.
> 
> Also only a few more chapters!! This is so fun to write, I'm gonna try to be more consistent about updating since there's so little left. Hope you enjoy and thanks for reading!!

Right, how to tackle Ivy? She doesn’t  _ remember _ , so--

_ The chance of this being a compelling, baseline cohesive narrative is less than 3%. _

Well, we can do our best. Those aren’t the worst odds of making a good story out of something I’ve ever had.

So, as I was saying, Carmilla was getting  _ very _ deeply into the concept of a mechanized brain. She often jokingly threatened to tear mine out and replace it, as it would be ‘no great loss’, in her words, but never actually acted on it. I’m grateful, I don’t think--

_ There’s a 7.49% chance of you treating any of this with sensitivity. _

That seems quite high, actually. Are you sure you’re not off with your--

_ Completely. Asshole. _

I mean, I’m only….uh. Fuck. Um. Ninety...three…? Percent? Of an asshole?

_ That wasn’t the statistic. You’re one hundred percent of an asshole _ .

I walked into that one. Look, do you remember anything about how Carmilla found you? I don’t know shit. I believe when she brought you back, Ashes and I were busy lighting Brian on fire for scientific purposes. 

Figuring out how long it takes a man made of metal to burn  _ is _ science, Brian.  _ Yes _ , we had to do it multiple times, that’s how experimentation works, right, Raph?

Marius, stop answering questions we didn’t ask you. I know you love the sound of your own voice, but--I walked into that one too, didn’t I.

You know, you’re all being very rude, taking focus away from Ivy. 

_ I remember burning. _

A common theme with us, by now, isn’t it? What was burning?

_ Books burn at 451 degrees. Digital records burn hotter. Human skin is destroyed around 170. Cremation is much, much hotter. I don’t remember how hot it was. _

O...okay. So people and books and records, then. Do you know how the fire started?

_ Usually, the probability of a fire being caused by accident or neglect is 80 to 90%. When the Mechanisms are even remotely involved, that drops to 31.8%. _

Ashes, you need to step up your game, that’s still  _ quite _ a lot of accidents. 

_ Ashes accounts for 94% of the arsons on the crew. _

Fine, point taken, the rest of us will try harder in future. Are you saying the fire was--

_ I can’t say anything with certainty unless it’s absolute and indisputable. _

Right. Do you  _ think _ Carmilla started it?

_ There’s a non-zero chance.  _

It’s like that stupid made-up Earth law about how anything that can go wrong will, except it’s ‘anything that could be Carmilla almost certainly fucking is’. Let’s not give that bitch the benefit of the doubt, Ivy, eh?

_ Statistically, you’re not wrong. Most of the things that’ve gone wrong regarding us have been because of her. _

Exactly.

_ The rest have been you. _

_ Alright _ , hey, what about that time Tim blew up the--

_ Nope. You were still the root cause. _

Do you even remember?

_ It’s a datapoint. I remember _ .

How convenient. Everyone has a fantastic memory when it comes to my failings, all of a sudden. 

_ There have been upwards of thirty-seven thousand in the time I’ve known you. _

That  _ can’t _ \--no, actually, that sounds right. I’m quite prolific. Out of curiosity, what counts as a--never mind, we’re getting off track.

So, Carmilla dragged Ivy back from...burning, I guess, and kept her in the lab for a long, long time. Longer than Brian, even, I think. The rest of us speculated about what she’d be like. Well. The others did, I was mostly fixated on seeing how quickly I could make myself bleed to death. I really did a lot in the name of science back then.

Eventually, Ivy wandered into the kitchen while we were having one of our rather lively arguments about the best cut of human--Ashes is wrong, by the way, ass is  _ much _ better than--yes, ha ha, I eat ass, Tim. Takes one to know one. 

Ivy told us that, statistically, we would probably get neurodegenerative diseases from eating people at some point, so she was a real buzzkill right from the beginning. She was clearly...not quite right, though. Her memories were obviously fragmented. She got immediate sympathy from Nastya, or, well, as much sympathy as Nastya ever gives, considering that she’s a literally cold-blooded motherfucker.

Brian took to her as well. Spent a lot of time with her. 

She and I, however, didn’t get off on the best footing, since she informed me early on that the chances of me successfully getting Carmilla to stop mechanizing were less than a percent. I asked her what the chances of me successfully shooting her in her metal brain were, and she said--

_ Jonny, the statistics on your aim don’t change. You usually have a less than ten percent chance of hitting your target. Varies based on distance to target and blood alcohol content, but not by much. _

Yeah, so I shot her, and it took her ear off instead of blowing a hole through her mechanism, but close enough.

_ Actually-- _

I  _ said _ close enough, Ivy, fuck, let me have this. It sent a message, at the very least, not that it was a message she fully remembered. I mean, I think she remembered that I shot her, but she didn’t take that as an indication of anything.

_ Takes multiple occurrences to establish a pattern. Your pattern of hostile behavior with new people is extremely predictable and fades quickly. _

Is...is ‘multiple decades’ quickly?

_ Relative to our lifespans? _

Okay, fair. 

I...of all of us, I’m the most sorry I couldn’t stop Carmilla from creating Ivy. Not that I  _ feel  _ anything about it, fuck, Marius, stay back, you start foaming at the mouth whenever I have half an emotion. 

It had to stop. She had to stop. I couldn’t stop her, of course, as Ivy had so helpfully informed me--she even made a  _ chart _ at one point, because she couldn’t just leave drunk, wishful, mildly deranged ranting alone--so I left, for a while. Went out and did my own bullshit. Made the mistake of getting caught up in a war for the moon. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I think this one is maybe my favorite? I had a lot of fun, at least, lol. Sorry for faintly pushing my Jonny/Tim agenda. Hope you enjoy!

My  _ dear _ Timothy, I do believe it’s your turn. 

Not that there isn’t a ten minute fucking song about you alread--

_ It’s not  _ all _ about me. _

Are you  _ still _ bitter that the Toy Soldier has a bit in your song? It’s still _ named _ after you, what--

_ It’s named after me  _ and _ the Moon Kaiser, if we’re being-- _

You really  _ are _ an attention whore, aren’t you? Blow up the moon and get delusions of grandeur, I guess, fuck.

Look, do we have to go into the whole Moon Kaiser thing? We’ve played the song so many times, can’t we just play it here?

_ I guess, but that doesn’t mean you can just skip over me like _ \--

Yes yes, alright. So, as you--the audience--know from the song we theoretically will just have played, I’d joined the 42nd Starbourne out of some combination of boredom and frustration with Carmilla. Couldn’t take being on the Aurora with her anymore. The Toy Soldier came with me because I guess I’m never allowed to know peace and will be cursed eternally.

The war was good, cathartic relief, for sure, though it wasn’t as fun for Tim. His best friend died, it was  _ very  _ sad, I’m sure, the moon blew up, etcetera.

Tim’s eyes were completely destroyed, and he was left floating in the vacuum, like the rest of us. 

I truly don’t know how the Aurora knew to be there for us. I think she works in mysterious ways, and I give Nastya credit for none of it, other than wifing a good one, I guess. She picked me and the Toy Soldier up, and there was a touching--in the sense that there was physical violence that involved touching--reunion between us and the other Mechanisms.

I was so wrapped up in getting hammered and telling the  _ very _ gripping story of the war for the moon that I neglected to notice Carmilla scooping the floating corpse of our dear lunicidal maniac into the ship.

I, in fact, had no idea she’d picked Tim up until he wandered onto the bridge with two octokittens on his shoulders, singing that infernal fucking song about being gassed to himself.

_ It’s a good song. Better than One-Eyed Jacks. _

Could you keep your interjections relevant, Timothy?

He seemed startled to see me, which is fair, considering I’d been a severed head the last time, and I was  _ certainly _ not expecting to see him. We’d known each other in passing, more like distant-cousins-in-arms than brothers, but having Carmilla mechanize someone I’d actually known, uh--

It didn’t do great things to me, if I’m being honest.

_ You didn’t shoot me, at least, so...better than the others. _

You’re right, I was too busy being all-consumed by blinding, murderous intent towards our bitch-doctor to bother expending energy killing you. Besides, you probably would’ve enjoyed it, you freak.

_ Space-pot, space-kettle, Jonny. _

I only like being killed  _ creatively _ . I’m bored of getting gutshot. Don’t even bother holding my insides in anymore, what’s the point if they want to be  _ out _ so badly?

_ Could you keep your interjections relevant, Jonathan? _

Touche, and also fuck you. 

So, I very badly needed to get rid of Carmilla. My emotions are, as I’m sure anyone listening has gathered by now, jacked the entire fuck up. To put it mildly. Generally, I have few to none, and then, occasionally, I have  _ all of them _ , or at least, all the bad ones.

We don’t need to go into  _ why _ Tim being mechanized launched me far into the outer reaches of feeling every variation of violent rage. I don’t know that I even know.

Marius, for the love of every fucking god in this hellish expanse of a universe, I  _ do _ not want to hear your theories, and neither does anyone else.

_ Repressed homoerotic feelings, you say? Why, Jonny, I think our dear Baron has a-- _

Die screaming, both of you, and stay that way. Do us all a favor.

The  _ point _ is that I was singularly motivated and very badly unhinged and I needed to stop Carmilla, once and for all, before she could hurt anyone else, especially anyone half-decent who deserved better.

(I’m talking about Ivy and Brian and  _ maybe _ Nastya, for the record, though they’re just as bad as the rest of us scum-from-the-start now.)

Obviously, shooting Carmilla wouldn’t work. I’d tried silver bullets decades before, but after shooting her point-blank through the back of the head with one, she helpfully informed me that those are for killing werewolves, not vampires. 

I’d considered trying to stake her, sure, but who has fucking  _ wood _ anymore? Besides, I’m a realist, I probably wouldn’t be able to take her in close combat since--

She is not  _ a foot _ taller than me, Ashes, come on. I’m not that sh--can I tell this story? Can I just--

I am what the mortals call a ‘short king’, I’ll have you all know, so just...back off. 

Look, it doesn’t  _ matter _ , my point is I didn’t think I could realistically manage to kill her, at least not in a way that stuck. So I came up with a new plan, somehow, through the absolutely ceaseless  _ shrieking _ in my skull, to just...incapacitate her and fuck very, very far off. 

_ Even though my eyes weren’t working perfectly yet and I could’ve used the extra tweaking before you-- _

You are truly chock-full of complaints today, aren’t you. 

_ Yes. You’ve held us hostage for a boring, rambling, incoherent retelling of stories we all already know _ .

Well, that’s...shut up.

I didn’t actually know how to manage my plan, since the Aurora doesn’t particularly respond to  _ me _ using her controls a good--what’s the statistic, Ivy? Oh, wow. A good 97% of the time. 

Her own captain.

_ First mate. _

Shut up.

She’s so insubordinate. I thought about asking Nastya or Brian to help, since she actually  _ listens _ to them, but I didn’t want to risk Brian being on boring moralistic mode and ratting me out, because gods only know what Carmilla would’ve done, and I couldn’t actually  _ find _ Nastya, so I sort of just stood in the heart of the ship and screamed my case for airlocking the Doc.

I told Aurora about every horrible thing she’d done to me, and the rest of us, though I suspect she already knew all of it, and probably really only cared about her girlfriend anyway. 

She didn’t respond, or at least she didn’t respond in any language I speak. I think maybe it got a little warmer, the lights got dimmer--who knows, I was out of my fucking mind anyway.

She listened, though. She ejected Carmilla the second an opportunity presented itself, and sped off, a great deal faster than she normally goes. Narrative convenience truly is a hell of a fuel source.

That bitch hasn’t set foot on the ship since, and I sincerely hope we can keep it that way.

Unfortunately, though, for all of us, she wasn’t gone from our lives for good, and the story doesn’t end there.

_ Really? You’re moving on? That was barely even about me _ .

Do shut up, Tim, the desperation is deeply embarrassing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3<3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no idea how I was gonna write Raph but I had...A Lot of fun with this. I love her. Miss La Cognizi, if you're out there.....anyway, hope y'all enjoy!

I was pretty fucking thrilled to have Carmilla off the ship, and the rest of us were as well, yes, even Very Moral Brian. We had a bit of a party to celebrate hopefully never getting our mechanisms tuned up again--and when I say  _ a bit _ of a party, I mean it lasted at least five decades. We have the time to waste, why not?

It was winding down, though, we all started dipping in and out to do other things--Tim found some  _ excellent _ psychedelics on this odd planet where a man in purple velour enslaved the indigenous people to produce drugs and candy and combinations of both. We helped the natives revolt against him--I took his hat, which looked  _ excellent _ on me, and Tim took a lot of the drugs and even more of the candy.

All this to say Tim and I were tripping for several weeks at a minimum, and I’d stopped trusting my senses a while into it, so I didn’t think much of seeing a woman with giant wings outside one of the Aurora’s viewports. I just thought ‘sure, my psyche is showing me a literal angel in some deeply futile and ill-fated attempt to make me a better person, several centuries late’.

Brian informed me that no, she was an actual person. We were so far from any planet or space station at that point that he seemed shocked that she could even _ be _ there, and naturally, because of the obvious mechanism, he and the others decided we should bring her on and talk to her.

I was not in any state to deal with anything that even  _ implied _ Carmilla, and despite being the cap-- _ Tim. _ Despite being the captain--fuck you all--no one ever listens to me.

So we brought her on. Brian asked her a bunch of boring questions about how she ended up there--

_ I flew! _

Yes, Raphaella, I know.

_ It was lovely, actually. Everyone always thinks it must get boring out there, but it never does. There’s always something to look at. _

Always some new story to tell.

_ Exactly! _

All I cared about was who’d done this to her. Whether Carmilla had immediately just kept on breaking people, or whether someone else was just as bad as her, but Raph just told us what she keeps telling us.

_ Maybe someday you’ll believe me. _

How the fuck could you install your own mechanism, Raph? Human bodies don’t move like that. 

_ I had an automaton friend help me. Stop! Stop giving me the Skeptical D’ville Glare!  _

I can’t believe you had a friend, even a mechanical one.

_ I’m very pleasant! Also, I built her, so. _

You poison me  _ for fun  _ every few years.

_ You’re the one who keeps falling for it. I think it’s a bonding experience! You’ve told me some very deep dark secrets while you’re dying in my lab. _

Are you sure they weren’t threats? If I’m telling you about my more brutal, creative murders, that’s a threat. 

_ Oh. I thought we were bonding. Can’t threats be bonding? _

...sure. Anyway, she told us she’d never heard of Doc Carmilla, had no idea that there were other Mechanisms, and was just having a nice time drifting through space. I thought this was bullshit, and informed her of this by shooting her.

She  _ smiled _ at me when I did that, told me no one had ever shot her before, and thanked me for the experience, which really took all of the satisfaction out of it. I also got scolded by Brian like a very naughty child.

I am a very naughty _ ancient being _ , Brian. I dare you to find any child as good at misbehaving as me.

Raph got along infuriatingly well with...well, everyone. She was immediately fascinated by the Aurora, so naturally Nastya decided they were...the closest thing to best friends Nastya is capable of. She was nice to Brian, which is better than the rest of us, and she’s always been  _ very _ fascinated by Ivy’s ‘statistics’, though I’ve always suspected that may be a euphemism. 

She has been, almost objectively, a fantastic addition to the crew, save for the ‘experiments’. I just didn’t and couldn’t trust her. I thought she was covering for Carmilla. 

_ Why would I do that, though? Why would I not tell you if I met an  _ actual _ vampire? That’s so  _ cool _. Even Transylvania-7 didn’t have  _ real _ vampires.  _

You went on for literal days about how  _ cool _ their blood siphons were.

_ Blood powered spaceships  _ are _ cool. _

I mean, yes. I still think they should’ve accepted my offer to collect fuel for them, we both really could’ve benefited from that. I would’ve done it pro-bono.

_ They wanted the blood to be in the people’s bodies to start with, though _ .

Their loss. 

I eventually grew to accept Miss La Cognizi almost exclusively because of her admittedly lovely voice, and because she can actually play the piano, which we were sorely lacking. 

(Tim, you play piano like I play trumpet.  _ Yes _ , it  _ is  _ that bad. You make Space Bach sound like a massacre--and not in a good way.)

_ Thank you, Jonny! That’s almost sweet. _

I  _ am _ capable of recognizing and respecting talent, believe it or not. 

_ What about my expansive scientific and mechanical talent? _

Don’t make that smug little face at me. You’ve killed me too many times with your ‘scientific talent’.

_ But weren’t some of them at least fun deaths? _

I know you’re thinking about the Magnetic Heart Incident, and I can assure you that nothing about that was fun.

_ It was  _ really _ fun for me. I love magnets _ .

The Toy Soldier and Brian were stuck to me for  _ days _ , Raph. Endless knives impaling me trying to get at my mechanism. You are the scientific method’s worst nightmare.

_ That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me _ .

Don’t get used to it. 

_ I was actually thinking about the time we were in that supernova.  _ That  _ was fun. _

...yeah, that  _ was  _ fun.

Well, anyway, Raph was a strange anomaly, and our one theoretical break from Carmilla. The odd cousin in our family of trauma victims. Sort of refreshing, really, to have someone who liked her mechanism and didn’t much resent immortality.

The next and final Mechanism in our sordid, stupid, scattered tale could technically count as both of those things, but, well, he’s a fucking bitch, so it all cancels out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3<3 only one more chapter!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marius stans: I'm sorry.
> 
> Also! Last chapter! Thank you all so much for reading, I've had a great time writing this and it's the first multi-chapter fic I've ever finished so that's a big deal to me. It got...more serious and also fluffy than I intended?? Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

Last, and  _ certainly _ least, we have Doctor Baron Marius Von Raum. 

_ I think Baron-Doctor has a better ring to it. _

I think you can shut up and fuck off because I’m telling the story. 

_ Jonny, really, the hostility is-- _

Still absolutely necessary and justified? Yes, I think so too. 

_ Just because you’re jealous of-- _

Marius, please, stop interrupting. I will cue you in when I want you to speak. Which is going to be never. I never want you to speak.

_ Jonny… _

Psychoanalyze  _ this _ .

_ Mature. _

I still don’t know how Von Raum even  _ happened _ , if I’m honest. Another cruel trick on the part of the Aurora, maybe, or possibly just none of us remembering to lock doors. We were playing a show at a terrible bar on a horribly posh planet--one with a  _ wretched _ amount of hecklers. The bourgeoise really are just the fucking worst.

I shot a man in the face in the middle of Lost in the Cosmos, it became a whole  _ thing _ , and several bullet wounds and one torched bar later, we made it back to the ship in fairly excellent moods (save for Brian, who still  _ abhors _ killing mortals when he’s set to High Horse).

This dissipated fairly quickly when we found a man in our kitchen playing one of Nastya’s violins and eating long-expired spacestries. 

Shut up, Ashes, alright, eventually spacestries will catch on, it’s so much more succinct than space pastries, and I think the public should start caring about  _ efficiency _ \--whatever.

Anyway, we were all still quite keyed up from the fight--mass murder--whatever you want to call it--and did not hesitate to just tear him to pieces. Nastya’s violin was, unfortunately, a casualty, which she was  _ not _ happy about, and I think she still holds that grudge. 

It was satisfying and bloody and while we were all fighting over who had to clean the blood out of the kitchen, we found ourselves interrupted by the gorey form of the man we’d just murdered more or less gurgling ‘have you ever thought of a chore wheel’.

He was definitely dead when we’d left him. Trust me. I know I’m not exactly the most reliable narrator in the world, but the man was very dead. History, but the boring, twee kind where people just talked about ideas. He was modern European intellectual history.

So him speaking was...jarring. Tim shot him again before I got the chance to twitch-draw my pistol, and after a few moments, he’d blinked it off.

We were dealing with another Mechanism,  _ again _ , and I really...I’d come around to believing Raph, more or less, as much as I’m ever going to, and I’d thought it was over. I’d thought Carmilla was done.

I snapped, a bit, and Brian flicked himself over to EjM to fairly gently murder and restrain me in my room so they could actually talk to the man, who introduced himself, obnoxiously as ever, as ‘Baron Marius von Raum--also a doctor’.

He’s not a fucking doctor.

Yes, I know  _ you all _ know, I’m making sure it’s very clear to the audience.

_ I am. We’ve been over this. _

He’s also a compulsive liar.

_ That’s like a grenade calling a bomb explosive. _

Just say ‘pot, kettle’, you fucking pretentious dipshit. Fuck, look, do you want to tell your Carmilla story? 

_ Not much to tell, really. Some...events happened, and she offered me immortality, and I said yes, and then it was all a bit much and I left. _

He  _ left _ . That, dear listeners, dear friends, is why I will fucking despise and resent Marius until my heart either mercifully shuts itself down or the universe ceases to exist. He  _ chose  _ to become a Mechanism--that’s bad enough--and then when he decided he didn’t want to deal with Carmilla anymore, he just...didn’t have to.

_ It wasn’t quite that simple, actually, I-- _

I don’t want to hear it. How long were you with her? A year?

_ A few months, but-- _

Don’t--don’t you all tell me to stop, this is part of it, alright? I  _ am _ calm.

_ Jonny, it’s not me you’re mad at, it’s-- _

Shut. Up. Stop! Stop it! I’ll--I’ll get back on track, fuck. So, in my absence, yet again, the Mechanisms gained a hopefully final member. Nastya’s never liked him. 

I don’t know if any of us actually  _ like _ him, but Brian, in his  _ infinite wisdom _ and  _ respect for the medical profession _ said it would be good to have a doctor onboard, as if he himself weren’t a doctor. I think he also may have forgotten that doctors are completely irrelevant when you don’t die. Sure, he ‘helps’ with minor injuries like broken bones or light impaling, but just dying is easier, faster,  _ and _ you don’t have to deal with Marius.

_ I also mentioned being a psychiatrist-- _

Show us your degree, Von Raum--

_ \--and the others said that might be a good thing to have on board-- _

We  _ are _ all neurotic, unstable fuckers, it’s true--

\-- _ particularly for you. _

That’s a joke, if any of us cared about each other’s mental wellbeing, someone would’ve done something  _ long _ before you. Besides, we’re all fucked in the head, not just me. I mean, look at Tim.

_ Jonny, you just held us hostage so you could more or less vent about Carmilla for a while. Which is fine. But you know you can just talk to us. To me, at least. It doesn’t have to be a show. _

Stop that.

_ Not everything has to be a show. Things can just be for  _ you _. _

No, I’m not playing this game. I’m not going to crack and do some monologue about how--how if my life isn’t entertainment to be consumed by others I have to deal with the actual repercussions of it, or--or how I have to live in my head for fucking eternity because of what she did to me, this--this isn’t a breakdown, you  _ fucking _ prick, this was just an  _ idea  _ I was  _ trying _ . 

Please let go of me. No. No--no. I’m fine. I am quite actually completely one hundred percent fine. Ivy, look at the statistics on me being fine and not needing a hug from Von Raum. Seriously? No, it  _ can’t _ be that low.

Tim, you are  _ not _ helping, you’re just getting your hair in my mouth--no, that  _ isn’t _ good, it won’t stop me from speaking, it just means I’ll get a fucking hairball like a gross humanoid octokitten.

This is humiliating and unnecessary and I hate you all. This better not happen when we properly run through this.

_ Jonny, no _ .

Oh, you think we’re not doing this again? You think you can spare yourselves by pretending we’re touchy-feely found family and hugging me? Absolutely not. We’re getting this right.  _ And _ , if you don’t all let go, I’m going to make it twice as long. We’re  _ truly _ fascinating, I’m sure we could manage, I mean, by all means, Brian, dig that metal shoulder into me, I’m just telling you what’s going to happen. I’m not fucking around even a little.

_ Goddammit _ , Nastya, really? Shanking me during a hug? What are you, in your early hundreds? So fucking immature.

I’ll see you bastards next time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!! It's been fun! I look forward to writing other Mechs content soon hopefully!! <3<3<3<3

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, all feedback is appreciated <3  
> find me on tumblr @witnesstotheend!


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